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IWW Practice-W Exercise Archives
Exercise: Fire!

These exercises were written by IWW members and administrators to provide structured practice opportunities for its members. You are welcome to use them for practice as well. Please mention that you found them at the Internet Writers Workshop (http://www.internetwritingworkshop.org/).

Exercise: Fire!

Prepared by: Carter Jefferson
Posted on: April 8, 2007
Reposted on: July 6, 2008
Reposted on: December 6, 2009
Reposted on: September 14, 2014
Reposted on: September 20, 2015
Reposted on: April 28, 2019
Reposted on: April 10, 2022

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Exercise: In 400 words or less, create the first scene of a story,
novel, or creative non-fiction essay. Let fire play a significant
part in that opening, and show its effect on the characters.

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Fire can keep us warm or force us out into the cold. It can light a
birthday candle or ignite a fuse, illuminate the pages of a book or
destroy a library. Like an unruly servant, it can be enormously
helpful or bring on disaster. It's been so important through the ages
that it used to be considered one of the four elements of which the
entire cosmos consists.

Great fires like the ones in London in 1666, Chicago in 1871, and
Boston in 1872 have influenced history. Authors as different as
Shirley Hazzard, Patricia Cornwell, and Nora Roberts have used fire,
metaphoric or real, as backdrops for best-selling novels. In this
exercise, you must light a fire, or discover one, and show how it
affects your characters.

Your scene will be an opening; make sure it will leave readers anxious
to know what happens next in your creation.

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In your critiques, consider whether the writer has used fire
effectively in the scene. Can you see how it affects the characters?
Does the writer show, or tell? Would you read further to see how the
story develops? Consider all aspects of the writing.



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Modified by Gayle Surrette.